September 29th, Get Em’ While You Can

These last few days have seen me grasping at every moment to be near fishy water. The aggressive fish that begin to show spawning habits and the beautiful colors bring me to the water daily until the end. I stopped off at a spot I visit every so often for a short romp with the trout. I was looking mainly to get into something larger and not necessarily many fish. This spot just a month ago was so choked with weeds that it made getting your fly to the fish rather difficult, now as the cool nights make everything stay colder the weeds have receded leaving plenty of room to sink the SMB.

I have read that your retrieve on a streamer should vary with the temperature of the water, in that if the water temp is colder you should retrieve slowly and if warmer you should speed it up. I’m not sure how my experience today fits with that thought process. I would cast downstream and allow for a few moments of dead drift to get the fly down, once in position I would begin to retrieve with small strips of my fly line. I varied the speed and aggressiveness of the twitch, the slower retrieve got more fish to follow my fly to my feet but the more aggressive twitch put the fish on the fly, atleast that’s how it played out today.

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This fatty female nailed the SMB about three feet down in a depth of five or six feet, she came up from the bottom upon the retrieve is my thought. I fish no indicator with the streamer and other than a tug the only way to tell is to see it go down. I love watching the flash from below and setting the hook to find out that you were right on the money. I specifically horsed this fish in to be landed with my net so I wouldn’t have to worry about wearing her out much, I want the babies back in the water and quickly. She was kind of an awkward shape, not sure if she had been hit by something towards the rear but she was pretty just the same.

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After landing a few other puny brown trout I moved to a second spot to find several larger fish podded up holding just below a riffle, it is spawning season for sure. I put the SMB on them and watched as several fish would come up and turn look flash, nothing. After a few passes nothing would even look at it, I am thinking that this is due to the odd currents my fly had to pass through, casting across and cutting two seams is not ideal but it is the only way in this particular spot. In previous visits there has been only one seam but today I found two causing my fly to move erratically which I think made the fish refuse. Rather than give up I concentrated on the slower water at the back end of this pool. For my efforts I got the largest Brookie I’ve caught this year, probably 10in and fat with eggs, a female for sure. It’s good to see this fish here, knowing it holds precious cargo to make more like it and maybe a Tiger or two…With that release I took off back home, one more day to go.